Street Musicians
(No, this has nothing to do with Jane Austen. Don't be worried like that.)
One of the things I love about Tel Aviv is that when you walk in residential neighborhoods in the evenings, you're pretty sure to hear someone practicing some instrument or other through their open windows. One street nearby has a pretty good pianist, there's a cello player not far and one of my neighbors is a violinist who is very much into Tchaikovsky's concerto at the moment.
And of course there are street musicians. I usually like street musicians, provided they are not trying to wrestle money out of me in a crowded subway car long after I've decided they actually made my trip worse rather than better (hello, Paris!). I usually give them some change, actually. Never knows when I might need to become one myself, after all. But I cannot bring myself to do it here.
There's a violinist up the main street nearby my apartment. He is there every evening during the work week. Every other time I walk past him, he plays Dark Eyes. If not, it's some variations on Vivaldi's Spring. He plays well. But how he doesn't bore himself to death I have no idea. And he makes the whole street feel like we're on hold, waiting for some technical person to come back to us and ask us once more if we're sure the router is plugged in.
There's a clarinetist I've seen pretty often near the commercial center. He always plays the same opera's overture (The Marriage of Figaro, I believe; something by Mozart, I'm pretty sure). Something not very clarinetty. And always at about half the required tempo. Which makes it very painful to hear.
The other day there was a flutist near the railway station. I shouldn't laugh at him because the last time I tried to blow some air into a flute, I can't say it really made any sound at all. But he was playing the theme from The Godfather. Well, let's say he was playing the notes from that themes, one after the other. I was whistling some tune coming out of the train and after we passed the flutist I heard some English-speaking lady close to me telling her friend she enjoyed the whistling from the young lady far better. (I never realized people where paying attention to my whistling, even less that they could enjoy it — except for my mom who always says it's what she missed the most when I left home, my incessant whistling, but she's bound to be biased.)
And then when I walked passed the museum the other day there was a guy playing the trumpet. It sounded very nice in the warm air of a Thursday evening. But, even without going to jazz, there are many, many nice works for trumpet out there. Did he really need to play, of all things, Carmen?
So, dear Tel Aviv, could you get your street musicians straight, please? I'm not sure what we can do with the flutist, but we can certainly improve the repertoire of the others? Then, of course, there is the probability that people who listen to street musicians and give them money would rather have them played some worn-out old tune they can recognize than anything else, but I really don't want to think about it.